Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The old playbook
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
18 Dec 2019
🖨️ Print Article
The old playbook
The old playbook

“The hatred of Tsarism was directed particularly against the Jews. On the one hand, the Jews provided a particularly high percentage (compared to the total of the Jewish population) of leaders of the revolutionary movement. In passing, it should be said to their credit that to-day the Jews provide a relatively high percentage of representatives of internationalism compared with other nations. On the other hand, Tsarism knew perfectly well how to play up to the most despicable prejudices of the most ignorant strata of the population against the Jews, in order to organise, if not to lead directly, the pogroms—those atrocious massacres of peaceful Jews, their wives and children, which have roused such disgust throughout the whole civilised world. Of course I have in mind the disgust of the truly democratic elements of the civilised world, and those are exclusively the Socialist workers, the proletarians.” —V.I. Lenin From a Lecture on the 1905 Revolution

Old, poisonous ideas
fester like rotten meat…
Gut roiling, headache,
rubbery knees—I’m nauseous tonight.
Just the night before, I’d asked,
“Where’s this month’s mass murder?”

If he marches into a mosque,
slithers in a synagogue,
bursts into a Baptist church
slaughtering worshippers;
If he ‘lights up’ families’
cars at ‘checkpoints;’
If he massacres medics
bent over prone silhouettes
from a chopper; If he
slaughters shoppers at a
mall or garlic festival; If he
massacres music lovers from
a high rise hotel window; If he
mows down dancers at a
club; If he decorates a family’s
walls crimson—ransacks rooms;
If he pulverizes patients,
nurses, doctors, buried
beneath rebar and concrete dust;
If he snipes marchers
and journalists from his
belly like a snake in the sand;
If he charcoalizes children
playing in a field
leaving trails of tears
diluted with warm blood—
9x out of 10 I win
Betting he’s a white boy.

Not the usual suspect, this time—
Questions bubble in my belly:
Pawns? Patsies? Military-pharmaceutical
Psychotropic fingerprints?
Timing?
As cataracts of capitalism
fall from children’s eyes—
a New World’s visible
through oily water,
melting ice, flaming forests,
parched farmland sown with
savage superstitions, prejudices:
The Führer came first
for the communists, Jews;
Socialists, Jews; trade unionists, Jews.
The Führer stole from The Czar—
The Czar from The Inquisition:
Division’s the math Minorities—
The1%—survive/thrive on…

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

BAR’s poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com .

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

 

Raymond Nat Turner

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Neo-Con Chippendales
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
Neo-Con Chippendales
23 October 2019
White phosphorus Pony, nuclear bumps and grinds; sulfur stench shimmies, twisted Third Reich minds—
Bad Hombre Defense
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Bad Hombre Defense
31 July 2019
Wait! Call the Cream Team—  Dershbag’s a lawyer,  Slick Willy’s a lawyer— Wait! Before you suicide the accused

More Stories


  • Nicaragua in the Multipolar World
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Nicaragua in the Multipolar World
    12 Jan 2022
    The U.S. regime change effort in Nicaragua has failed. The people are determined to assert their rights of self-determination and the U.S. is not the only player on the world stage.
  • Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Policies of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination in Ukraine
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Policies of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination in Ukraine
    12 Jan 2022
    The Ukraine crisis began in Washington, not in Moscow. The Obama/Biden regime change plot against an elected Ukrainian president reverberates to this day.
  • EXCERPT: Black Bourgeoisie
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: Black Bourgeoisie
    12 Jan 2022
    Revisiting E. Franklin Frazier’s classic sociological study Black Bourgeoisie should help us understand the misleaders of today’s Black superelite.
  • Pentagon, U.S. Department of Defense
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    How will we pay for it?
    12 Jan 2022
                                                           …
  • Twitter Bans African Anti-Imperialists
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Twitter Bans African Anti-Imperialists
    12 Jan 2022
    Many liberals and even some leftists welcomed the removal of Twitter accounts for Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Donald Trump, and other right-wing ideologues, but it was clear
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us